Welcome to “A Debt of Attitude,” a college classroom blog exploring what today’s college students are doing for — and to — themselves, and the price they may pay, or the success they  may enjoy as a result in the future. 

This blog is the result of a 10-week classroom collaboration between New Media Communications students at Oregon State University. The course was Spring 2008, NMC 301: Writing for the Media Professional, taught by Pamela Cytrynbaum, of the New Media Communications program. Our charge was to create multimedia projects exploring ways college students help and hinder themselves/ourselves for our futures. We brainstormed our theme, created teams to cover various pieces of the larger story, chose from the many media platforms we explored in class, used “old school, old media” techniques of research, interviewing, surveying, and collaboration to research, develop and write high-quality content. We used new media to present that content.

We chronicled our process using invididual class blogs, then all piled in here to show we did to each other and the rest of you. We designed this class blog to serve as a relevant, well-researched clearinghouse of information about our class project. 

As New Media students, we are training for jobs that do not yet exist. Information is being traded, recycled, reworded, and reused in a million different forms and formats. We are witnessing a revolutionary renaissance of how information is created, gathered, revised and communicated. It is no longer true that only those who own the printing press own the discussion. We can all be “content” creaters, exchangers and users; and that is only a slice of the worldwide “New Media” movement. From podcasting and YouTube to new ways of practicing journalism and digital video production, New Media has taken over the way we exchange and convey our stories.

This blog represents the culmination of our conversation. In it we try to raise and answer questions about just what is happening to the way our information travels.

Feel free to comment and offer suggestions; this is, like New Media itself, an ever-transforming enterprise always pushing outward.

 -Pam Cytrynbaum, and the staff of The Multimedia Tribune – Spring 2008  NMC 301